Chongqing

Chongqing, Wade-Giles romanizationCh’ung-ch’ing, conventional Chungking, city (shi) and provincial-level municipality (zhixiashi), southwest-central China. The leading river port, transportation hub, and commercial and industrial centre of the upper Yangtze River (Chang Jiang) basin, the city is located some 1,400 miles (2,250 km) from the sea, at the confluence of the Yangtze and Jialing rivers. During the Sino-Japanese War (1937–45) it was the capital of Nationalist China. The city was named Chongqing (“Double-Blessed”) in 1189 under the Nan (Southern) Song dynasty (1127–1279 ce). At that time the city occupied a commanding position between the prefectures of Shunqing (centred on modern Nanchong) to the north and Shaoqing (centred on modern Pengshui) to the east.

Chongqing city was under the administration of Sichuan province from 1954, but in 1997 it was separated from the province and designated a provincial-level municipality under the direct administration of the central government, the fourth one (after Beijing, Shanghai, and Tianjin) to be established. At that time the entire eastern portion of Sichuan was incorporated into the municipality, which greatly expanded Chongqing’s overall land area and population. Both the city and municipality have experienced quick development since then. In addition to Sichuan to the west, the municipality is bordered by the provinces of Shaanxi to the north, Hubei to the east, Hunan to the southeast, and Guizhou to the south. Area Chongqing municipality, 31,700 square miles (82,000 square km). Pop. (2005 est.) city, 4,776,000; (2010 prelim.) Chongqing municipality, 28,846,170.

Landscape

City site

Chongqing municipality consists of three lobes of unequal size extending southwest, northeast and southeast. The districts of central Chongqing city occupy the southwestern lobe and are ringed by suburban districts. From there the northeastern arm spreads along the Yangtze valley. The southeastern lobe, stretching southeastward from the Yangtze valley, consists of a series of hills and valleys between Hunan and Guizhou; the Wu River (another tributary of the Yangtze) runs roughly along the southwestern side of the lobe until it veers south into Guizhou.

The western and southwestern portions of the municipality lie in the Sichuan Basin and consist of relatively level to hilly terrain. The Daba Mountains run along the northern border with Shaanxi, and in the northeast the Wu Mountains demarcate the Yangtze’s entry into Hubei, in the river’s Three Gorges region. The Fangdou Mountains occupy the eastern portion of the municipality, and in the south the Dalou Mountains extend northward from Guizhou.

The central part of Chongqing city is built on and around a hilly promontory of red sandstone and shale that constitutes the southern limit of the relatively low Huaying Mountains, which reach southward from Sichuan. The promontory is bounded on the north by the Jialing River and on the east and south by the Yangtze, effectively forming a peninsula projecting between the two rivers. Other hills, some also offshoots of the Huaying, rise in the city’s outskirts and suburban districts.

Climate

Chongqing is noted for its mild and intensely humid climate. It is shielded from the cold northern winds by the Qin (Tsinling) Mountains in Shaanxi and has little or no frost or ice in winter; the mean temperatures in January and February, the only cool months, are about 47 °F (8 °C) and 50 °F (10 °C), respectively. Summer, which lasts from May through September, is hot and humid; the August mean temperature is 84 °F (29 °C), and on many days the high temperature exceeds 100 °F (38 °C). The remaining months are warm, with annual mean temperatures ranging between 64 and 67 °F (18 and 19 °C).

The bulk of the municipality’s precipitation (all as rain) falls from April through October; the average annual total ranges from 43 to 55 inches (about 1,100 to 1,400 mm). Because of the high humidity, fog and mist are particularly heavy. From October to April the city is perpetually blanketed by fog, which hampers inland navigation, aviation, and local traffic. Chongqing’s climate has earned the city the nickname “fog capital” (wudu). The aptness of this name has only increased under present-day conditions: contaminated by soot, carbon dioxide, and acid rain, the atmosphere of Chongqing is among the most polluted in China.

City layout

Central districts

The Old City of Chongqing (formerly surrounded by a city wall and gates, of which only two gates now remain) occupies the eastern third of the rocky promontory and covers an area of about 28 square miles (73 square km). The southern and eastern slopes, facing the waterfront, form the “lower city,” while the remainder is the “upper city.” An east-west avenue runs through the middle of each of these areas, and a third runs atop the spine of the promontory’s ridge. Prior to the city’s modernization, its cross streets were narrow and often winding; following the topography of the hill, some of them went up and down in flights of hundreds of steps. However, few of these picturesque lanes now remain.

Newer sections of the city on the western part of the promontory spread far along the banks of the two rivers, covering an area considerably larger than that of the Old City. During the Sino-Japanese War (1937–45) the offices of the Nationalist government were located there, and they are now the sites of government office buildings and of museums and exhibition halls, notably the Great Hall of the People (completed 1954). The city has grown so much that the incorporation of numerous industrial towns and suburban communities has extended the city limits to Jiangbei in the north and to Baishiyi in the west. Equally important are the former suburban areas on the south shore of the Yangtze. In former times, ferries were the only means by which the rivers could be crossed; later they could also be crossed by way of the Jialing Bridge (1966) to the northwest and the Chongqing Yangtze Bridge (1980) to the south. Since then, some dozen more bridges have been constructed across the Yangtze and Jialing, notably the Chaotianmen Bridge over the Yangtze, which had the world’s longest steel-arch span at its completion in 2008. In addition, cableways across the Jialing and Yangtze link the Old City with adjacent districts. The spacious gardens and beautiful residences of the surrounding districts contribute much to relieving the crowded conditions of the central part of the city.

Suburban and outlying districts

In contrast to the congested conditions in the central city and the industrial districts, the suburban districts have a number of delightful resorts and spas. Among the scenic spots on the south shore are the temple in honour of the empress Yu, consort of the Yu (or Da Yu) emperor (the legendary founder of the Xia dynasty), on Mount Tu; the wooded summer resorts of Qingshuixi (“Clear Water Creek”) on Mount Huang; and Nanwenquan (“South Hot Springs”), which has delightful retreats at Huaxi (“Flower Creek”) and Huxiaokou (“Tiger Roar Gap”). A short distance north of the city are the springs of Geleshan. Farther up the Jialing River at Beipei are the Jinyun Temple, the celebrated retreat of the Song dynastysavant Feng Jinyun, and Beiwenquan (“North Hot Springs”), reputedly superior to Nanwenquan because its water is warmer in winter and cooler in summer.

With the establishment of the larger provincial-level municipality, the administrative area under the city expanded significantly to the northeast and southeast. The area of the Old City was renamed Yuzhong district; Yuzhong continues to function as the political, economic, and commercial hub of the municipality, focused on the district’s main business centre, located around the Liberation Monument (Jiefangbei) in the centre of the Old City.

Areas surrounding Yuzhong, including some former suburbs, are now the municipality’s core districts, including Jiangbei, Nan’an, Shapingba, Jiulongpo, and Dadukou. These districts have developed into major shopping and commercial centres. Shapingba also has emerged as a regional cultural centre, home to several of the municipality’s major institutions of higher learning. Jiangbei district is a centre of automobile and machinery production, as well as a distribution hub for goods and materials, and Nan’an district has developed light industries and supportive commercial services.

Farther to the northeast, Chongqing municipality is included in the western portion of the Three Gorges Dam project along the Yangtze, which required that large numbers of residents in areas flooded by the reservoir be relocated. Wanzhou district (formerly Wanxian city), at the western end of the reservoir, has become one of the major ports along the Yangtze and has emerged as a regional hub of water, rail, road, and air transportation with the construction of deepwater berths, rail lines, express highways, and an airport.

Housing

Before the Sino-Japanese War, Chongqing was a city of narrow streets and crowded housing. Streets and lanes followed the contours of the hills. The houses were constructed of bamboo, wood, or thatch in the poorer residential areas and of brick in the wealthier areas. In all areas there was a high degree of congestion. A vigorous modernization program was introduced when the city became the seat of the Nationalist government. Most of the city wall was demolished to make way for new streets, and existing streets were graded and widened. The tremendous demand for housing created by an influx of government workers and refugees led to the rapid expansion of the sections west of the Old City.

From 1938 to 1942 Chongqing was heavily bombarded by the Japanese, causing massive destruction in the city. Parts of the remaining wall and virtually all of the city’s historic monuments and temples were damaged or destroyed. Because of the destruction, the new communist government (which came to power in 1949) had little difficulty in carrying forward the tasks of modernization and expansion after the war. Modern buildings now stand throughout the city, with skyscrapers dotting the sky in the newer commercial centres. In the northern suburban districts and adjacent areas, large buildings were erected to provide living quarters for workers and accommodations for factories and workshops. More recently, the completion of the Three Gorges Dam and the subsequent relocation or resettlement of some one million inhabitants in the municipality precipitated an economic boom, as massive government investment was used to build new towns, business enterprises, and communications and transportation infrastructure in the affected areas.

People

Before the war with Japan, Chongqing had fewer than 250,000 inhabitants. From 1938 onward, people from the Japanese-occupied coastal provinces flocked to the wartime capital at an astonishing rate. A part of Chongqing’s population increase since 1938 consisted of government workers, factory personnel, and refugees from other provinces. In the late 1940s, however, the city’s population decreased temporarily with the return of people to the coastal provinces. The influx of people from downriver contributed to turning formerly parochial Chongqing into a cosmopolitan city. The population generally has continued to grow since the early 1950s, especially after the establishment of the municipality in 1997. The number of people living in the city’s core districts is now some 20 times greater than the population of the Old City before the war.

The Southern Mandarin dialect of Chinese is the most commonly spoken language in the municipality. Despite its heavy accent and many regional slang words, it is quite intelligible to speakers of standard Mandarin. There are more than one million people of the Tujiaminority group and some half million Miao (Hmong) living in four autonomous counties and in Qianjiang district in the eastern and southeastern parts of the municipality.

Economy

Manufacturing

As early as the middle of the Ming dynasty (1368–1644). workshops for spinning, weaving, silk reeling, and brewing were established in Chongqing. The city was opened to foreign trade in 1890, and two metal mills were set up a year later. By 1905 Chongqing had spinning and weaving mills, silk-reeling mills, and glassmaking and cigarette plants.

The foundations of Chongqing’s modern industry were laid between 1938 and 1945, when factories transplanted from the coastal provinces began production under the aegis of the Nationalist government. Because coal, iron, and other resources were in such close proximity, industry rapidly expanded. Considerable industrial development was undertaken by the communist government after 1949. During the 1960s and early ’70s, some military-related industries were moved to or established in the city and vicinity or transferred there from other parts of China as part of a program to increase industrial production at inland locations; this provided a strong foundation for the city’s machinery industry. By the late 20th century Chongqing was one of the largest and fastest-growing industrial centres in southwestern China.

The city’s enormous complex of integrated iron and steel plants is among China’s largest facilities. Ore is mined at Qijiang (in the southern part of the municipality) and at Weiyuan (a short distance west of Neijiang) in neighbouring Sichuan province. In addition, there is now a large iron ore mine in the northeastern corner of the municipality at Wushan. Rich bauxite deposits have made Chongqing a major manufacturer of aluminum products in China. It is also a major producer of strontium carbonate, which is widely used in the production of colour television tubes and optical glass.

Coal is mined at several locations in the municipality, and Chongqing is an important coal-mining base of southwestern China. The municipality also has rich reserves of natural gas, notably the large Wolonghe natural gas field at Dianjiang. Gas pipelines and production facilities have been developed, including a major natural gas purification plant at Changshou. Chongqing’s power-generating capacity was greatly enlarged with the completion of the Shizitan hydroelectric station on the Longxi River, northeast of the city. A large new hydropower plant at Pengshui, on the Wu River, started operation in early 2008. In addition, a large thermal power station was constructed southwest of the city, near the Yangtze River. However, more hydroelectric and thermal capacity is being added to satisfy the municipality’s increasing power supply needs.

Other important heavy industries include machine, farm tool, and munitions factories; truck and motor-coach manufacturing plants; and chemical and fertilizer plants that manufacture soap, candles, acid and caustic soda, fertilizers, plastics, and chemical fibres. Since the late 1980s, several well-known Chinese automobile manufacturers have established production lines in Chongquing, making trucks, a variety of car models, and motorcycles. Petrochemical and pharmaceutical industries developed quickly after 1980, and the manufacture of precision instruments has also become important.

Chongqing’s light industrial manufacturing leads the entire southwest of China. Noteworthy are the production of cotton, silk, paper, and leather goods, as well as flour mills, dyeing factories, and vegetable-oil and food-processing plants. Chongqing is also noted for its handicrafts, especially lacquerware. A high-technology industrial development zone was established in Chongqing in the early 1990s, and hundreds of scientific and technological enterprises—concentrating on electronic information, bioengineering, pollution control, optoelectronic integration, and new and advanced materials—are now located there.

Trade

Chongqing is the focal point of trade and transport not only of the municipality and neighbouring Sichuan province but also of the hinterland provinces of Shaanxi, Yunnan, and Guizhou and of the autonomous region of Tibet. Since 1979 its port—along with several others on the Yangtze—has been open for direct foreign trade, increasing the city’s importance as an international trade centre. Before the early 1950s, especially before the Sino-Japanese War, Chongqing imported large quantities of consumer goods from downriver or from abroad, but rapid industrialization brought self-sufficiency in consumer goods to the region and to the southwestern provinces. Chongqing is now the major commodity-distribution centre for southwestern China.

Trading and financial sectors have been established in the city, with national and foreign banks, insurance companies, and even stock-trading firms opening offices there. In addition, leading Chinese and international retailers have set up both retail stores and wholesale distribution channels in the municipality. The central business district at the Liberation Monument in the Old City remains the most prosperous business centre in the city, while the wholesale market at Chaotianmen (at the confluence point of the Yangtze and Jialing rivers) is among the largest of its kind for daily-use manufactured goods in the upper course of Yangtze region.

Transportation

After 1949, bicycles, buses, and motorbikes gradually replaced chairs on bamboo poles and rickshaws as the principal means of transport in Chongqing. Cable tramways have long provided cheap and convenient transport over the steep hills. The municipality’s rapid economic development has been accompanied by considerable improvements in its transportation infrastructure. By the early 21st century, the ubiquity of bicycles on the streets had given way to a dramatic increase in automobile and motorcycle traffic. The city also began developing a rail transit system, the first line of which opened in 2005.

Chongqing is served by two great rivers, the Yangtze and the Jialing, and is the leading port of southwestern China. As a result of extensive work carried out in the 1950s—including dredging, clearing shoals, and installing buoys and signals—navigation through the Yangtze Gorges was rendered easy and safe. Completion of the Three Gorges Dam, which created a large reservoir in the gorges region, now makes it possible for 3,000-ton oceangoing ships to sail directly up the Yangtze to ports in Chongqing municipality. The port of Chongqing itself has been equipped with large container docks and automobile roll-on and roll-off wharves. Above Chongqing, smaller steamers are able to sail into Sichuan province, up to Yibin on the Yangtze and up to Nanchong on the Jialing. Above these points, junks can navigate beyond Chengdu to Guanxian and Maoxian on the Min River and to Lüeyang in southern Shaanxi on the Jialing. Chongqing is also a major embarking point for excursion boats to the Three Gorges area.

Chongqing’s railroad system developed rapidly after 1949. A line between Chongqing and Chengdu, completed in 1952, is the vital link between the Chengdu Plain and the Yangtze; a southern spur extends through Zigong and Yibin. The Chengdu-Baoji line, completed four years later and electrified in 1975, connects the city with the Longhai Railroad and the entirety of northwestern China, as well as with Wuhan in Hubei province and a major north-south line; the Chongqing-Xiangfan (Hubei) railway also directly links the city with Wuhan. The line between Chongqing and Guiyang not only connects Chongqing with the province of Guizhou to the south but also joins other lines in Yunnan and Guangxi running to the Vietnamese border. More recent construction includes a line from Chongqing to Huaihua (completed 2007), which provides direct access from the city to Hunan province and connects with a line to Liuzhou (the capital of Guangxi province); and a spur line from Suining, east of Chengdu. to Chongqing (completed 2006) that shortens the distance from Chongqing to Chengdu.

The first roads for wheeled traffic in the city were built in 1933. As a result of work begun during the Sino-Japanese War, Chongqing is now the hub of an extensive network of highways. Major arterials lead south to Guiyang, northeast to Wanzhou, and northwest to Chengdu. The riverside boulevards and numerous bridges across the Yangtze and Jialing rivers have become the main traffic arteries within the central city area.

Jiangbei International Airport, opened in 1990 and expanded in the early 21st century, is located about 20 miles (32 km) north of the central city. It provides regular flights to major cities throughout China and to some international Asian destinations such as Bangkok, Seoul, and Singapore. Another airport, completed in 2003, is located at Wuqiao, some 10 miles (16 km) southeast of the northeastern municipality of Wanzhou; it provides convenient air service for travelers to the Three Gorges area.